More companies and government organizations will see the value in sharing data, perhaps through contests like Yahoo!’s Learn to Rank Challenge.Individuals will also have more access to data as tools for scraping web data become more accessible and sensors and other hardware become more affordable and easy to use.

There will be progress in tools and techniques for cleaning data.

As tools become easier to use and more data becomes available, there will be more attention paid to developing focused tools and techniques for the tedious process of cleaning data for analysis.

Educational resources will improve.

Data science books, courses and online resources will encourage a wider participation in all things data. Hopefully more open source examples of the practice of data science will make such analysis more approachable to first-time data hackers.

As the tools become more sophisticated, the focus will shift from technology toward discovery.

Much of what was written about data science in 2010 focused on the marvels of modern technology that allow for the analysis of massive stores of data. As these technologies become ubiquitous, more concern will be on the methods of analysis and presentation of findings.